It is possible that people knew that animals flew South for winter and just become unknowable. But then scholars tried to apply a new conceptual framework to that. Asking the question was a step forward, even if the hypothesised answer was wrong. Its basically quackary with good intentions. And I expect some people knew all along that birds flew South but lacked the words or the influence to wrap that in an abstract concept that would be taken seriously.
Erm, the evidence for an event that happened 60+ mio years ago and the evidence for an event happening every year that you can watch in real time now is maybe not quite comparable?
Bird migrations aren't that easy to observe with 1822 tech either. It's not like they could stick a GPS recorder on a bird, or mark a bird and follow it in a car. You can make local observations (many birds fly overhead, heading South-East) but with how difficult travel was it's not trivial to piece that together to the conclusion that birds travel from Europe all the way to Africa
During the early age of scientific inquiry in Europe, very few human travelers were following the white stork's migration route (Europe→Anatolia→Levant→Nile→East Africa), and I'd guess that most of those who did were from the Muslim world and not particularly accessible to European observers.
The small number of long-distance travelers and cultural contacts between the Eastern Mediterranean and Western Europe did result in lots of valuable learning; this particular bit of learning just took a while.
To be fair, that was a genuinely crazy idea until the detailed evidence came in. The question itself only comes up after lots of relatively modern science. Similar for plate tectonics.